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Hi all Hope someone out there is able to offer advice for my challenge.

My 2011 Macbook Pro is very sick. At the moment I am only able to operate it in safe mode and even then it crashes. It is under warranty and will be returned to Apple in a couple of weeks time. Reason for such a lengthy delay is I live very remotely, over 2900km from the Australian mainland on an island!

I have since purchased a refurbished Macbook Pro (arriving next week, hopefully). It has Mountain Lion. And here lies my challenge... my "sick" Macbook has Snow Leopard!!

I have been backing up ie Time Machine to my external drive - I can still manage that most of the time... My question is:

Am I going to be able to use Snow Leopard Time Machine to bring everything across to the "new" macbook running Mountain Lion?

If it is possible, I'd really appreciate the "how to do" in as simple non-technical terms as possible.... I am not really good with these kind of things.

At this stage it is totally out of the question to upgrade the "sick" mac to Mountain Lion, although I have purchased the upgrade from Mac. One of the reasons is the 4gb size and we don't have that amount even allocated to us each month.. It will have to be upgraded at the Apple store in Perth.

Am I going to be able to use Snow Leopard Time Machine to bring everything across to the "new" macbook running Mountain Lion?

Yes. Here's how:

The first time you turn on your "new" refurbished MacBook Pro it should ask you if you wish to migrate data from another Mac. Respond yes and attach your Time Machine backup drive to the new machine. Follow the prompts and your old Snow Leopard data will be transferred to the new machine.

The new machine will be updated with your old account, data, settings, and applications. However, Mountain Lion will not be overwritten by Snow Leopard which will result in the new machine with all your old data but running Mountain Lion.

One bit of caution: Do not create an account on the new machine when you turn it on for the first time otherwise you'll wind up with two accounts and a mess. Migrate first and everything should work out OK.

Thank you so, so much for the welcome and an answer to my question . I feel as if a weight has been lifted from my shoulders.I reckon I can manage to accomplish the migration without too much of a challenge. Fingers crossed

I am assuming I have everything correctly backed up with Time Machine. With the current Mac in its "sick" state, if I try to enter Time Machine, it just crashes.